The Seagate drives are actually more expensive in Australia than WD but it's worth it, it's just slightly better. I have both a Seagate and WD 80GB drive and there have been no problems.
I also had a seagate drive fail, but I think that was because I used screws that were to long to mount it and I screwed them in to tight. The best brands are seagate and western digital.
overall, I believe Seagate have the lowest failure rate, followed closely by WD.
there will always be at least a few cases of hardware failure with any brand, so if one or two people get a bad drive, doesn't mean the wole series is bad